Think Like A Game Designer - Michael Gnade — From Indie Game Journalism to Board Game Creation, Embracing Feedback, Navigating Kickstarter, and The Cost of Game Marketing (#21)

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Michael Gnade is the founder and lead designer at Rock Manor Games. He started his career in games with Indie Game Magazine, writing and reporting about the newest games from independent creators. Inspired by Ascension, Michael developed Brass Empire, which he created on Kickstarter. Michael Gnade put together one of the more comprehensive looks at Kickstarter metrics out there; if you’re interested, you can check that out here. Otherwise, grab your notebook; there’s some awesome advice on this one! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry, with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Michael Gnade. Michael is the owner and founder of Rock Manor Games and the creator of games, including Maximum Apocalypse, Brass Empire, and Lawyer Up.

We have an interesting backstory, actually, because unbeknownst to me, Michael's interest in tabletop games was renewed when at a Pax event he sat down to play a game of Ascension. It was the first deck building game he had played, and he became enamored with the genre and started to work on designing his own games. The reason that I discovered Michael is because I, as I was prepping for launching the Ascension Tactics Kickstarter, started doing online research to see what information was out there about doing marketing and the results of marketing for Kickstarters. And he had some of the best information on his site.

Seriously, I highly recommend after listening to this podcast, we have tons of information here. But if you go to Rock Manor Games.com, he has a ton of these very detailed reports of how his advertising spends went, what worked, what didn't. And so I reached out to him to get that information. And after our first conversation and learning about our mutual backstory, I had to have him on the podcast to share that information with you guys.

So what we're going to talk about to today includes a lot about kickstarters and marketing, but also about Michael's background and how his start as an indie game magazine editor and his passion for games ended up leading to him building this network and building the infrastructure that he needed to become a successful game designer and publisher. And he has a lot of lessons about the process for making games and the process for succeeding. And I love his story as something that is someone that follows their passion and turns it into a career and turns it into a business. And that's something that I love to see. And the full circle of which my history and creation has inspired him and his

putting things out there and creating things has inspired me is something that really warms my heart and just reinforces that fundamental message that I try to reiterate over and over again, that put good things out there, build a community, add value to people, and things will work out. And I found that to be true again and again in this industry. And this interview and this relationship that we have built is another example of that. So hopefully you guys get as much value out of this as I did. There's tons of useful information in here for anybody that's thinking about starting their own business, launching their own Kickstarter or building their own game.

So without further ado, here is Michael Gannate. Hello and welcome. I am here with Mike Ginnade. Mike, it's great to have you here. Thanks for having me on. So this has actually been an interesting, you know, sort of origin story, I think. I want to dig into sort of yours, but we both kind of reached out to each other and have some interrelation. You know, I kind of found some of your information online that really

was incredibly detailed and valuable for people running Kickstarters and some of the best that I've seen out there. So I really wanted to learn it both for myself and share it. And my understanding is I had a little bit of influence in some of your origin story as well. So maybe we can talk about who you are, what you do and how you got here. Sure, yeah. So I'm Mike. I am the owner of Rock Manor Games. We make, I would say, highly thematic,

you know, sort of engrossing games. We're best known for probably Maxill Apocalypse, which is a cooperative game. But yes, the reason that I'm making games today does have a little to do with you and dissension specifically. So, I mean, obviously I've been a gamer my whole life. I've played video games. I owned Hero Quest and collected magic cards when I was in sixth grade and all that.

But, you know, I lost it and just the ease of computer games and video games sort of took over for a while there in college. Plus, you know, I moved around and, you know, bringing your magic cards. The first day of school at a new high school was exactly the way I wanted to go back in the mid to late 90s there. So, you know, I stuck with video games. and then it was actually pretty involved with like indie video games. I ran some websites covering them. So I would go to a lot of these conventions and, you know, meet up with game developers on the digital side of things and interview them

and do, you know, camera interviews and all that stuff. I want to dig, yeah, let's dig into that a little bit more. So how did you get started in that process, what kind of, you know, skill set you run? So you were running an indie review site? Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of things I was involved with. indie game, the indie video game side of things.

I started indie game mag.com, which was like a digital website and magazine that covered indie games specifically. I think I started that in like 2008. And my interest in indie games started when I was in graduate school in 2006. You know, it was like I had been in college and played all the big stuff.

and I was just yearning for more unique stuff. So, you know, games like World of Goo and that kind of stuff were all coming out. Sort of big indie releases, braid. And I was really impressed with how they all turned out. So just out of sort of a fandom, I started IndieGamagamag.com, and it ran for, I don't know, five years or so.

So we would do a lot of coverage for that. And through Indie GameMag, I also started a website called Indie GameMag. stand which helped promote and sell indie games, you know, via store, online store and promotional thing. Great. And were these and this was sort of more, you know, hobby. Did it, did you make a living off of this? Was it like what? I definitely didn't, I definitely didn't make a living off it. It was always, it was like a side hustle before I had kids, you know, I was, I was newly married. I actually put together the Indie Game Mag website when my wife went

dress shopping for her wedding dress. So my story for that is she left me alone, she left me alone for too long and I, you know, got bored and just started doing like really nerdy stuff without her. So that's great. You know, it was like, you know, she drove up to New Jersey, wherever it was. It was like, I'm going to go dress shopping and I thought it was going to be like a couple hours and it turned like the whole day. So I was just sitting around the house, you know, the department and started messing around on the computer. And, you know, I have, I have some web design coding skills. so I just sort of put together a WordPress site with indie game reviews, you know, for all the stuff I had. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, it really echoes just a lesson I always try to sort of reiterate, which is just, you know, just start. Do the thing, you know, find the areas that you're passionate about, whatever it is you're excited about, and skills that you have that you can be able to sort of add value to the world and just start making stuff. So, you know, you and you were passionate about any games. You have the ability to make a website and, you know, you're just kind of off and running and not expecting to get paid and not looking for that. upfront, but just kind of moving down the path I found. Yeah, and then like, pretty. Right.

And then like that kind of stuff helps you, right? It's like, oh, you get a reputable website. And then it's like, oh, you want to go to Pax? Well, instead of paying $100 for a Pax badge, let me fill out this media, media form, you know? So it was, you know, you fill out the media form and, oh, guess what? You get a free ticket to Pax. Well, now I'm going to go up to Boston. I mean, I went to college up there.

So I had a lot of connections and I could go there cheaply, you know, to begin with. So that's what brought me to Pax, and that's what helped me discover, or rediscover, I guess, my passion for board games and card games. We had been recording a bunch of interviews for indie game developers in, like, the indie mega booth there, and my camera guy and I's feet were pounding and hurting, you know, at the end of that Saturday or whatever it was. And we made our way back to the airport hangar that is sort of the Boston Convention Center. and we were just standing next to the table. But I told you earlier, it was Ascension the rise of vigil.

The rise of vigil. That was like the one that was coming out. And one of your very friendly demo people just sort of offered to sit us down and teach us how to play the game while we were sort of standing next to the table figuring out what we were going to do next and how we're going to get food and complaining that our feet were hurting. Yeah, I love it. And so this has been sort of one of the fun parts of, you know, this. I guess phase of my careers and you know I get to see all of these you know unknown ripple effects that we you know be able to help inspire other people to make awesome games and uh I also am very grateful to my friendly demo staff who we've trained and cultivated over the years that makes a big

difference by the way for everybody out there uh you are demo staff being friendly and engaging and pulling people in will make a huge impact yeah you're going to spend a ton of money to go to a convention and set up and have everything if your demo staff as I've seen many times or just kind of bored or too cool for school, you are wasting a ton of your time and money. And it just being friendly goes a long way. Yeah, it's just being that little extra bit of like not being like a salesman and like being like cheesy trying to like constantly pull people in. But, you know, he saw us standing there and said, hey, guys, would you like to give this a try? You know, there's two seats or whatever.

And it was like, sure, why not? You know, like we've got, why wouldn't you try it? And that was my first introduction to, you know, sort of the deck building genre that is now. So, I mean, obviously I played other games, but the dynamic deck building thing that, you know, Dominion sort of started. Ascension was my first introduction to that.

I absolutely loved it. Went pretty crazy. I think I was like shortly after buying Ascension and like Revenge of the Fallen, I started buying up like every deck building game that there was, just trying to find something that hit the sweet spot of what I wanted it to do. And when I couldn't find anything, like the other things we've talked about, I just started making stuff. I just started making my own game, my own version of it on no cards, you know?

Just hanging out with my friends, making no cards. I had a friend who sort of liked playing Ascension a lot with me, and he would try it, and eventually made Brass Empire and just released it on Kickstarter again, just as sort of a side project, not really trying to make money off it. And I don't think I really made much money off for that I'm far, to be honest, I think I pretty much broke even. But just wanted to make enough to, you know, create the game and manufacture it and go through that process and sort of learn what it was all about. Yeah, that's, well, and it's funny because the process you're describing is not all that different from how I made Ascension directly. I played Dominion and I was like, wow, this is awesome.

There's this core mechanic here that I love, but it doesn't quite do what I want. and there's a few other things I really want to improve it. And at that time, there were no other deck building games. So I was like, okay, well, let me try. And I played with the cards and wrote things up and made my prototypes and played with my friends who I would otherwise have been playing Dominion with. And eventually, you know, made Ascension and got it out there. So it just, I really like, you know, sort of telling these stories because it's just, you know, for a lot of people, they see, you know, they look at, you know, you found out a company, you've launched a bunch of products. We're 10 years into Ascension.

We have all these different, you know, teams. and processes, but it all just starts with just, hey, this is cool, what if, and start scribbling down and start trying stuff. Yeah, I mean, it all has to start with you just, like you said, just make something, you know, and then then you sort of see if it has legs. I mean, when you've been in it long enough, like I'm sure, you know, you have as well, you start making stuff and there's some stuff you do throw in the trash can or sort of leave on the shelf and, you know, what, you know, when you make something and you keep,

it keeps exciting you. I think that's really the evidence that it's sort of something worth pursuing, you know? Yes, yes. I've used different analogies for this, but I actually recently was provided with a better one because I think yes, it is true that many ideas go to the graveyard, but as a game designer, you are a necromancer. Many of the ideas that you leave in the graveyard then become the seeds for future designs. And so I found that my, my giant list of these didn't work and I had to get rid of them,

even years later. Like the game I released last year, the ringmaster is a fun, quick little card game that has a circus theme to it that has something I'd literally been trying to do for over eight years and had never worked and just kept going back to the graveyard. It was finally when the theme and the mechanics kind of all mesh together was able to get it out there. Yeah, yeah. I'm lucky enough to be in the Philadelphia region, and we've got a really good, we call it the Game Makers Guild of Philadelphia, but we get together two times a month, so every two weeks,

and playtest each other's games. And having that community and working with other creators and bouncing ideas off them and everything is a really helpful process. And it's one of those things like you bring a game, to a meetup, you know, in January, and, you know, it doesn't work. It sucks. You know, you two sort of tell people to stop playing it. You're going to go back to the drawing board where you play someone else's game that's feel the same way about it. But then six months, eight months later, you know, they bring something back. And like, oh, I reiterated on this

and this is like the new version of it. And then all of a sudden it's like super fun or something, you know, and that's, that's all part of it. You know, I believe very strongly in that sort of the unpubed philosophy and the philosophy of the Game Makers Guild which like you want to iterate on things a lot you got to fail faster you got to get things out there like the biggest mistake I think young designers can make is this idea that

they've got to keep their ideas secret because it's so important it's so good and they're so scared to share any of their ideas with anybody which just means there's no one there to tell them how to make it better preach on preach on I agree completely

the people that incubate and hide things from others, they just never am able to make it get better. And, you know, making games that suck is the necessary precursor to making games that are awesome. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely made some really bad games. So I was smart enough to not release them, I guess. It's the good thing. Yeah, well, that's, that's what the testing is all about. So yeah, so let's let's, let's, um, digging a little bit to the, you know, you talk about the, the importance of community. And, and that's a really critical factor. And you said you were lucky to have a community by you. How did you, did you just discover them?

They just fall on your lap? Or have you, you know, what's been, have you done anything that, you know, people out there could maybe follow as far as finding and cultivating such a community? I can certainly tell you sort of how the community is run, which could help people found it. I had nothing to do with finding it. So, I mean, I really was lucky. You know, we've talked sort of about how I was involved in the indie game scene. And luckily, you know, there's a lot of crossover between people who like video games and board games.

so you know someone who sort of knew me from going to like video games things you know like tech meetups in Philadelphia and everything else one of the indie developers in the area just sort of said oh do you know Nicole she runs Game Makers Guild for like board games she's like into board games and you know you should you should contact her and I did and she just you know I mean they're pretty open

but in general they sort of let anybody come, but she was, I mean, she's really the founding member of Game Makers Guild along with the O'Neils and some of the other people in the Philadelphia area. And I was just lucky enough to have a somewhat acquaintance with them and connection so I could start attending and feel comfortable going, et cetera. But I think the big thing about it is that, I mean, if you're trying to create that, that guild yourself or that organization yourself, They have regular meetups, so obviously not recently with the current outbreak, but under normal times, they had two locations, both game shops that are just nice enough to give us demo space. One was in the city of Philadelphia proper, and one was outside of Philadelphia.

So they give us sort of two different locations. So if you can only make it once a month, like sometimes I can, you can sort of pick which one's most convenient to you. And there's one sort of outside the city, which is much more convenient for me as someone who lives in the suburbs with kids to drive to and park. But I have been to the one in the city as well. And the other ones in our university city over by UPenn in Philadelphia. And they just meet, you know, they switch each spot. So like the second Tuesday or whatever it is is always the Philly one. If the fourth Tuesday is always the Westchester, Pennsylvania one,

and it's the same time every time. And you don't need a ticket, you don't need an invite, you don't need to pay anything. All you need to do is we have a Facebook group, and if you're bringing a game or coming, if you're bringing a game and you want a demo, you just need to let us know how many people you have, how many people you need through a game, how long it's going to take to test,

and that's it. And then just make sure you bring it, you know. and when people get there, we're just welcoming and we try to count how many players we have and get going as quickly as possible because obviously people can come and go throughout the night and the hour blocks that were there. But, you know, I think it's very similar

if anybody's ever been to like Unpub or like the tag tables or something. I mean, it's very similar to that but sort of less formal because you don't have a big convention of people coming in. Yeah, and I think that, you know, there's a couple things. One, for people that are out there,

very likely a community like this exists near where you are. Certainly if you're in any major city, whether it's an un-pub or meetups or, you know, even things at your local game store you can find. A lot of times they'll have sort of new designer nights. And so finding that community and being able to sort of commit yourself to running playtests at them, especially like a two-week, I find a two-week rhythm to be great in general, like for it's enough time to sort of process feedback, do a new iteration, you know, get it ready and bring it to the table, even if you've got a, you know, a job and kids and other things that are distracting you. That's still a good time to get it done.

And then if that doesn't exist near you, then I strongly recommend that people work to create it. The formula that you just described is not that hard to create for yourself. And if you're the kind of person that puts in the effort to get it out there, create the space, go through, you know, consolidating feedback and organizing it, that's adding a ton of value to the community. And a lot of people are going to be really happy to sort of join and form around that.

Yeah, I will say too that the Philadelphia one was modeled after, I believe, I believe Gamemakers Guild of Boston or Massachusetts or whatever was first. So, you know, there are definitely people that want to iterate on and proliferate sort of the Game Makers Guild philosophy. And if you have, you know, you can search it on Facebook. You can get into those groups and you can talk to the people in charge and they will absolutely help you set them up in your area. Yeah.

And that's the other point I wanted to kind of emphasize, which is, you know, obviously as we're recording this, it's still very hard in a lot of places you can't, you know, allowed to get together physically in groups. But there's a ton of ways to do this stuff now remotely as well, even for our own team where I was actually really nervous as we're working on our projects that like we couldn't get together in playtest anymore. But we found ways to do it on things like tabletop simulator. And I know other people are using other tools like Tabletopia.

And there's tons of ways for you to actually still continue to playtest your game and they get together. And the beauty of that is actually we've now been able to incorporate play testers from all around the world that we previously couldn't. You know, we would, you know, we'd send print and play copies at certain phases of the process, but it was much harder. Now they can actually play directly with us. So in many ways now, even no matter where you are, you now have the opportunity to create these sort of global communities of designers and playtesters and things like that. Yeah, plus sending a print and play, it's like, that's so, I mean, we've all built prototypes. And like building prototypes is like not the fun part. building it on your computer is fine and like creating it

but the actual like printing it out and cutting it and crafting it at least for me is not fun so I always think that you know tabletop simulator or something like that at least they can get playing the game right away and play testing it right away they don't have this huge hurdle of like they've got to put in the time to like get their blue stick out to like make the game you know

yeah so I you went from from initially being excited about deck building games and working on that kind of space and now you're sort of most well known for a cooperative game. What motivated this sort of shift to future designs and what have you learned as you've moved

from sort of those different genres and trying some of the different stuff that you've been building over the years? Well, for me, you know, I think for me to really get passionate about a game, I have to know what the theme is and the theme has to inform the mechanics somewhat. So, you know, if we're talking about Maximum Pockrobes,

which is what we're best known for. You know, I spent over two years bringing that game to Kickstarter. Part of it was because I was, you know, I wasn't doing it full time and I was still doing it on the side. But the other part was is that when I started developing my second game after going through it once, I knew what theme I wanted. So Maximum Apocalypse is always about, you know, apocalypses.

I've always loved that genre of film, movies, TV. You know, there's all sorts of wildly different stuff in that genre, I think, out there. So I sort of knew, I'm like, oh, like, there's so many different apoptuses you can have. You can have, like, alien invasion, you know, like robots. So I knew I wanted all this stuff in there because, like, that just got me excited. and I hadn't seen a game like that. And, you know, at first it just started off like a card game like Brass Empire because it's what I knew to do and it was simple.

And it was going to be just sort of like you have your deck that is your person and you fight cards of monsters. But through that process of developing the game, I took what I had, my prototype, and I threw it in the trash can and started from scratch like twice. So while the idea of having a bunch of things, of Apocalypse's in the same game and having a bunch of different modular things about apocalyptic survival was always a piece of the game. The mechanics started from scratch

at least twice. Like I literally took the prototype, threw it in my trash can, and went back to Excel and made a new file and started over it. So let's dig there because I can feel, I can hear the emotion and your voice around this one. And I think this is a really easy point for a lot of people, right this doesn't work nothing about this mechanic works i'm physically throwing in the trash can i'm mentally fed up and you went back and you know kind of had the where you know the sort of fortitude to to to try again and and and start over what's that process like and how maybe can you advise people that are you know we've all been there and how do you how do you get up and keep going in the project like that or how do you know when to keep going or when to leave it in the graveyard yeah i mean um

that's a good question um I guess first and foremost, it's easiest for me to talk about when I sort of knew I needed to start over again. So throughout the whole process, there are highs and lows, but I never lost the excitement for just like the idea of that theme and it coming together sort of the way I imagined. You know, because I imagined this game and I didn't really imagine the game with mechanics. I just imagined how it would make me feel and like what what it would do for me, which is like it's going to let me be the survivor, which is like, some remnant of like what my job was in the real world you know so if you're unfamiliar as max apocalypse like one of the first characters i figured was the fireman who wears a bunch of fire gear like has fireman helmet and you know like the fireproof jacket and stuff to protect him and he's got

an axe that he used to bust through doors but in the apocalypse he pretty much sets stuff on fire and then he's protected from dying from that because he's got the suit and stuff on um so it was like you know if an apocalypse happened and you were a fireman, like you would have all this useful stuff that you could use in the apocalypse that you would have access to. And I wanted to feel that way of like, you know, I wanted to feel that tension of survival

and all that kind of stuff that's so prevalent in the genre. So I wanted that feeling. And, you know, I mean, I can sort of give you a long and short of the process. You know, when I first started out, the game was too simple, in my opinion. It was just sort of about cards and playing cards and like dealing damage.

And it was like, you know, I mean, there's plenty of other games that do stuff like that, you know, whether it's heartstone or magic or whatever, you're just sort of like playing cards from your hand and like doing X damage and counting it up. And then beating the thing. So it didn't feel exciting. Like there wasn't enough going along. There wasn't enough other elements of what the clockwoods could entail that I thought was in the game. So that simplified version You know was like scrapped all that and sort of started over again And then I did the other extreme in my opinion

Which is I started making things like way too complicated I had like dice where you would roll to like scavenge things And whatever the dice face showed you It was like that's what you got and There's all sorts of stuff that like in practice seemed cool And obviously there's elements of the ideas of that That made it into the final game but ultimately there are no dice that you roll for for what you scavenged.

There's just a scavenge deck you draw up from, you know? So it got really complicated where it became like a thing where it was like, I felt like I was being an accountant, you know, like I'm sitting there, we're taking our turns, and then you're either over-analyzing, like there's too much analysis paralysis, or you're sitting there going like, okay, I've got to like read each of these cards over again to make sure I'm doing everything right and like all the interactions are correct and blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it just got way too complicated, and I thought it got to a point it was, like, unfun. So then I threw it in the trash again, and then it sort of ended up somewhere in the middle. And there were elements from going through those iterations, like you said, being a necromancer and bringing things back. You know, I like the idea of scavenging for things,

but it was this convoluted dice system that it didn't need, right? So it became just make these three decks, and they draw on a location with red, draw from the red deck, which is going to give you most likely fuel. You know, like I simplified all this sort of like mathy stuff that was going on to be like literally just a card draw. You know, my action is a card draw. My action is to move this tile, you know,

instead of like scouting things out and drawing maps and like, you know, all this convoluted stuff, you know, to shoot guns and reload guns and everything. Became play a card, reload a gun, you know? Reload anyone. No ammo is universal. I know shotgun shells are different than pistol. pistol, you know, pistol nine millimeter rounds, but to the sake of a game, it doesn't matter,

you know. Yep. Yep. So I, I want to, I want to, uh, break out a few things from what you said. So, you know, one, uh, sort of, I think that the, the, one of the answers that you gave implicitly there for why, you know, how do you know to keep going was you're still excited about it, right? You're still excited about the core idea.

Uh, and in this case, it was a thematic driver for you that was holding it together. And that kept, that keeps you going. It's something that there's something there that you really want to sort of express. And then the other key design lesson I see very often, especially with people who start with a theme first, is the tendency is to make things way too complicated, right? You want to represent the theme as authentically as possible. And like you said, all right, well, shotgun shells are different than pistol bullets, which are different than laser energy. I don't know, whatever you have. But in reality, the more of those things that you have, well, if you're wounded, maybe

you won't be able to run as fast, you know, all of these different things, uh, become, uh, super cumbersome. And the ability of, you know, a good design is to abstract to the level that makes it easier to process and understand, but still evokes the feeling you're looking for, still evokes the themes that you're trying to hit. Uh, and so, you know, trying to nail that, you know, don't abstract so much that you lose the, you lose the theme, uh, but don't try to be so realistic that you can just get bogged down in minutia. And that's a, you know, it's definitely more art than science, but it's a, it's an important thing. I think most people, in my experience, when they get started, err too much on the side of

being authentic to the theme and ending up becoming a mess of too many little bits and boops and side rules and whatnot. Yeah, because creating is fun and you think that adding all these things that you implicitly understand is fine. But then when, I mean, a playtest will quickly teach you that you've made something too complicated has been my experience. Like, it's pretty evident when you're giving a basically what I call like a rules dump where like you're sitting there talking for like 20 minutes straight about all the rules that means

you have two my new show like oh yeah you know when i was demoing maximum apocalypse you know i mean once i had it pretty much designed you know it took me about a year to get it to where it really wasn't changing that much you know i mean other than card balance stuff i mean you know that stuff is but that's like not a big deal um but the core rules got to a point where they just stopped changing and then i started taking it on the road and i was i was going to convention anyway for digital or to support my Kickstarter game that I had made, Brass Empire, my first deck building game that I sort of would bring around with me. And, you know, when people would sit down and demo that game or come and sit down,

I'd sort of say, hey, do you want to try something new? And people would usually say, yeah. And I playtested and took, you know, Maxill Apocopold's to convention, basically for a year, playtesting it before I took it to Kickstarter. And I think that was very, very, very good idea. one it made the game way better two it it it got it really did do that sort of crowd building thing that you want where like there were some people who tried it who like even though it wasn't finished and it wasn't perfect they saw that same excitement like the excitement that I felt the whole time I was developing

the game was imparting to them and they were excited about it and they were there day one to back the game and talk about it and be excited about it yeah that's awesome and that helps a lot certainly you know I always say I always tell people who are asking which which of my games they should try or whatever and the thing about maximum apocalypse which I think is great is you know I don't think it's a game for everyone there are certainly people out there that don't like it that's fine you're never going to make a game that everyone likes but what I found to be very true of maximum apocalypse is when someone likes it they really really really like it and they want everything for it you know and we've been lucky enough to to be able to

a supply, get to all those ideas I originally sort of jotted down, you know, however many years ago when I started working on it. You know, I literally had a spreadsheet of just like brainstorm ideas, you know, of characters and apocalypses and monsters you can put in the game. And, you know, hasn't, I've been able to go back to that list a few times and luckily been able to add new, new features and new content to the game. Yeah. Yeah. So, you've, you've now, you know, Russians Kickstarter a couple times is a topic I want to deep dive into. So I think, you know, I think now is a good time to do that. You know, there's a lot of advantages to Kickstarter. There's also a lot of disadvantages, a lot of challenges. And, you know, you, you started going

to Kickstarter pretty early without as much of a sort of pre-built audience, which is a very, very hard thing to do. So maybe you can talk a little bit about your, your experiences on Kickstarter, why you chose to go there and kind of what, you know, we'll sort of dig into lessons as we go along the way. Sure, yeah. Well, I think my, I think my, my, first Kickstarter for Brass Empire. I think I was I think I was lucky. I think I had some luck going to it. I mean, one, I think it was 2015, so it was still, Kickstarter was still earlier, and it's, you know, it's not what it is today. You know, if I came today with the same strategy, I went to Kickstarter with Brass Empire. I don't think I would have funded or been as successful, you know, been as

successful. But I think the big thing for Brass Empire was, again, because I was sort of aware of Pax and the digital conventions. I was lucky enough or smart enough. I applied to the indie megabooth tabletop showcase with Brass Empire, and that was at Pax Prime, which is in Seattle, which is the biggest Pax. And I got in, and I was on the show floor for three days straight demoing Brass Empire about a month before I launched on Kickstarter. So I hadn't really taken it to other conventions.

It really was just my friends and I developing the game, you know, in sort of the regional area. But I did get some exposure and some momentum by going to that convention. And, you know, at Pax Prime, there's not a lot of tabletop games at the time, you know, back in 2015.

So you stood out a little bit more. I pretty much had demos constantly. So it was a way to, it was a way to get, you know, a couple, you know, a handful of people informed about the game and ready to back it on day one. And then also because it was a deck builder, I think that time is sort of when that genre was growing up. So I sort of had like some market fit without even sort of thinking about it.

And again, I just think I was sort of lucky enough and and dumb enough to set my whatever funding goal as low as it was. Again, I just wanted to make something and print something that I could give to friends and stuff. And if people at Pax wanted it to, you know, I wanted to have something for them. But I wasn't planning to print, you know, thousands of copies in it. I think that first print run, I think, I mean, I think I had 500 backers for Brass Empire. And I think I printed like a thousand copies, which is like the minimum of the printer I use, you know? Sure. So it's, I mean, it's starting small and, which is and not, not expecting to make much money after your first Kickstarter, which I think is also true if you're going to be sort of on your own and don't already have.

an audience and that is the expectation everybody should have. And, you know, well, maybe it was sort of lucky right time, right place, but you also, you know, you hustled. You went to a convention. You worked all day. You got people excited. You know, that's, that's what it takes. So I, again, remember the same same thing for Ascension. You know, I fortunately had a little bit of an audience kind of already from previous things I've done, but I, I ground it out. And I went to, I went to conventions, demo the game of people, got people excited, started to get the buzz we needed. And then, you know, we're able, we didn't have Kickstarter back then. But I was able to sort of get the traction to actually get sold in stores.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, way back, way back, you know, I mean, if I had known what I know now, you know, I wouldn't have just done Pax West. I would have done at least a tabletop focus convention as well, you know, because the hurdle of the Pax is always, are you talking to a video gamer? Are you talking to like a just a gamer in general, right? because there are plenty of people that go to packs that don't play card and board games. There are plenty that do and there are plenty that don't.

So, you know, going to tabletop conventions that are specifically geared towards that fandom, I think, is important too. I wish I had done in Origins or, you know, Gen Con or something before I had kick-started Brass Empire. But, you know, I did learn from my mistakes. And like I said, I went to literally every convention I could for a year. with maximum apocalypse, which helped a lot. I mean, I was in the first exposure playtest hall with maximum apocalypse back whatever year that was before it was on Kickstarter, you know, that hall where games are basically, you know, black and white are on.

But for anybody out there who's designing games and wants to design games, that is a great way to not only attend Genton, but to get some traction with your game. I mean, I think you can, I think you can get three or four sessions, three or four playtest sessions in the first exposure playtest hall for three, four hundred bucks, you know, and it includes your ticket to get in and go there and see everything else and potentially meet other people who can help you in the industry, et cetera. So, you know, I think, I mean, obviously you can launch a Kickstarter and do everything digitally and never show up in person, but I think, especially in this day and age, I think it's more and more important to be there

physically and show yourself up, you know, show up and make those connections. I mean, you could be hanging out with a bar with somebody who has a lot of influence and followers or something, you know, on Instagram for some board game thing, you know, that you happen to just get along with and become friends with because you play a game of GenCon together. And it's not that, you know, it's not, it's not going out there and being like a networking salesman, but it's like that stuff naturally happens as long as you're putting yourself out there. And there's nothing wrong with asking for a little bit of help or someone knows who you are and then tweets or posts about your game when it launches, you know? I mean,

that stuff is all the kind of stuff we want. Yeah. And I mean, it just ties in the earlier conversation about the importance of community, the importance of playtesting and getting feedback, right? When you go to these conventions, you get, you become a part of a community of people that are huge game enthusiasts, obviously, or you wouldn't be at that convention. Yeah, definitely. You get the opportunity to get playtest results of people who are very enthusiastic and meet other people who are doing the same thing that you are. And like that only, not only has just the immediate practical result of like getting people excited about your game, getting feedback, but also the long term results of, you know, building relationships over time that can add value,

having, getting your own excitement level up, you know, being able to share the struggles of design, right? Because it's, you know, that's, again, one of the other reasons I started this podcast is to share the, you know, the hardships and the parts that are not the, the sexy, my game's on shelf and doing well, a lot of, most of it is, is a grind. And knowing that that's the process can really help give you a little bit of hope when you're in the middle of it. You know, that's that sort of the thing. I spend a lot of my time in what I call sort of the dark forest of creativity

where you just, you don't know where you are, you don't know exactly how you're going to get out, you know where you want to go. But, you know, but I've been through it so many times that I can be comfortable there because I know I will get out eventually. And that, but it took me a long time to get to that place. It's true. So I also want to, so in addition to sort of this, you know, kind of conventions and going out and, you know, the other thing about conventions, they're super fun. I mean, obviously, if you like board games, you know, go to the place where everybody's hanging out and playing board games.

Like, it's a really, it's a really great way to be able to spend your time. I mean, you know, this will be the first year, unfortunately due to COVID that I'm not going to attend GenCon in 15 years. And, you know, we launched our very first, sold our very first copy of Ascension there exactly 10 years ago. So it's a, you know, those things have been a huge part of my life and made some of the best friendships I've had. Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, it's definitely weird. I mean, I haven't, you know, I've been to Gen Con since I sort of started once I knew better. And, you know, it hasn't been 15 years, but I think it's been like six or seven. And I think this will be the first one I miss as well, obviously.

Not for any reasons, you know, personally, but obviously just the conventions canceled itself. Yeah. Well, and of course, you know, now there's this new sort of world of virtual conventions and, and actually just, of course, this is something that was already important, but it increases the importance of digital advertising, social media, the other ways you can kind of get the word out. Yeah, I do feel like I'm stuck in that creative force a little bit more because it's like, what else can you do? You know, you can't play test. You can't. So I definitely feel like I've had a month of just thinking about future games and pipelines and, you know, you definitely get lost in it. Luckily, I've met people who you can sort of call up on the phone and talk to about it, talk it through.

But it's not the same as playing through it, you know. Sure. Well, that's where, you know, yeah, we've come to rely on a lot of the virtual tools. Like we mentioned, Tabletop Simulator has been one of the, been a godsend for us to be able to keep playtesting games and new ideas even after, even if we can't all get in the same room together. But I also want to talk about how, you know, we reach people because the other side of it is the big challenge that, that I'm struggling with now, which is like, how do you get the word out? How do you get people to know about your games? I mean, I'm releasing, you know, a bunch of games this year. And while, you know, the next ascension release, yeah, probably people, we can get the word out about that because people already know it and we have an audience.

But when I have a new game coming out, you know, like I have a night of the ninja, like a social deduction, like drafting card game. Like, how do I get people to play that? How do I get people to know that it's there when I can't, like, normally I'd show it off at a convention and, you know, do that all year. So, you know, you've, you've had some success with both, you know, paid advertising as well as as some other kinds of placements for your Kickstarter. Maybe we can kind of dig in about either old ideas or new that you've had and ways to think about that reaching audiences. I mean, yeah, I don't know if I have any, I mean, I guess I have some, I don't, I don't know if I have any new ideas about how to reach audiences.

I guess, you know, my whole philosophy with online marketing and paid, paid advertising is you just sort of have to have faith that it works and you need to be willing to spend time and money doing it because it is important. But what I don't think, so I'm very anti, like, I'm sure you've seen it. I'm sure you're enough Facebook groups on Facebook or board game groups just in general. I'm very against, like, people who will join a group and pop into a group and just like, be like, hey I've been working for like three years on this board game like we're finally on kickstater here's a link and it's like it's just you know they're basically just plugging a link or link spamming you or whatever and people online are so savvy about that it doesn't work if you want if that's all you want

to do you should be paying for advertising because the the it's the right way to do it one and two you know if you do it in a forum as like a free way and you're just link spamming it's going to be ignored or worse, you're going to get some negative feedback as a result. And the best way to prove that is just go try to post a link on Reddit. And you'll quickly find that that is not the right way to go about engaging that audience. So, you know, I think you need to be smart and you need to know the difference between social media audiences and how they react to things. I think you need to be authentic, be true to yourself. So, you know, if you're saying, they're going, you know, the only reason I'm here in this, in this group right now is to post

my Kickstarter. You probably shouldn't post that Kickstarter. You probably should take a step back and say, if I wasn't doing a Kickstarter, why would I be in this group? If I was a board gamer, you know, like, is everyone sharing games that they like to play? Maybe I should talk about that, you know? Um, uh, you know, you need to be smart about how you are on social media. Um, and then when it comes to spending money on advertising, you know, I'm, I'm, I try to be as metrics driven as I can, you know, whenever there's marketing outside of, you know, whether it's a convention, you're handing out postcards or postcards or, you know, handing out flyers or sell sheets.

You hope that that stuff works and maybe someone sends you an email about it afterwards, but you don't really, you can't track how many people it's bringing to your website. And one of the good things about online advertising is that you can start, you can try to track that stuff. It's not perfect, but you can try to track stuff. So you know, so you can optimize sort of your ad spend and spend money in the places where you're getting the biggest impact. Because if you're starting out or if you're pretty small like me, you know, every dollar does count. Because those are dollars that we, you know, that we need to come back to us.

You need to make the type of quality of gate we weren't. Or those are dollars we could have spent going to a convention or paying an artist or something else, you know. Yeah, so one point I want to highlight is this idea that, you know, yeah, these, these Facebook groups and other social media groups, they actually can be a powerful way to get the word out about your projects. But if that's all the reason you're there, or if you're just showing up as kind of this sort of, you know, sniper slash taker, it's not going to work. And it's just kind of a leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.

But for those of you out there that are thinking about, you know, making a game down the road, one, you know, find the groups that you actually like and start contributing to them now. And then when it is a couple years down the road or whenever and you say, hey, by the way, I've got my own game, people will be thrilled to back it. People will be thrilled to support you because you've been there. You're a legitimate part of the community. You've added value. You've helped other people, whether that's suggesting cool games or giving feedback on other people's games or whatever the group is about. You know, that's a, for those that don't want to spend money, that's a way to get engaged and invest.

time in something that will help potentially pay dividends down the road. Yeah, and if you're working on something like spend the time while you're working on it to talk about working on it. I mean, talk about the ups and downs, you know, the ideas you've got, the, what works and doesn't work, what mechanics you're thinking about using. You know, you're going to get stuck at some point in a game about some piece of it or some mechanic is going to sort of be like, I don't like how this feels or this doesn't work the way I wanted to, you know, whether it's, you know, I don't like how my shop's

working in this game, you know, or. You've got a dungeon crawl, and it's like, I don't, I don't, I want the shopkeeper to work differently. If you talk to people, they'll, they'll give you feedback and they'll start hearing about your game. And when you are done, years later, you know, it'll be, they'll be that much more excited and ready to back it. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've seen like affected Facebook group posts where they're talking about. They've made this game or they're working on something. And people pop into the comments section to say, what's the link for the Kickstarter? Because they didn't post the Kickstarter.

they were just engaging the group like a normal person. Yep. And that's going to get you more clicks than putting a link at the top of the conversation, I think. Yeah. No, I agree completely. So it's one of those things that it's not a complicated path, but it is one that requires like legitimate engagement, authenticity and time. And so that's one of the valuable resources.

But I also, I want to actually, I do want to dig in for a little while on paid advertising because the thing that made me, well, actually, I'll link the two topics even better, because by creating content that adds value to people, whether that's on social media or your own blogs, you can draw people to you. And that's exactly what happened in our case, right? The reason that we're having this conversation is I saw your post on rock manor games.com about advertising your Kickstarter postmortem for your lawyer up. And you had an incredible breakdown that was very transparent about how much you spent on each channel,

how many clicks you got, what was the cost. per click, how much revenue you got from those channels, what your return was, everything like that, which is the best I've seen anywhere about what that, getting that information out there. And I was like, wow, that's awesome. Because I'm going to be very transparent. I'm terrified of spending money on ads. I have been, you know, from the beginning of the company, almost everything that we've done has been organic or on social media or just kind of viral stuff. And the couple of times I spent money on advertising, specifically when we were doing some digital games, I really felt like we just didn't know what we were doing and our returns were not,

not easy to measure the way we were doing them. So you know, you have created value that has now, you know, spread the word around and we'll continue to spread the word about your other games and stuff on this podcast and elsewhere. So that's one just concrete example of doing things that add value that ends up coming back. But now I want to let's, let's transition into that adding a value and talk about how people should be thinking about spending ads.

What's the best way for somebody who's not, sophisticated about this sort of thing to start saying, okay, I've got a game. I really want to help promote it. What should I do? How do I think about this? Well, it's so funny that, you know, you're talking about the organic content. You found the breakdown for lawyer up, which is the most recent kick-setter we did. But that blog post was just a reiteration of a blog post and a series of posts I did like years before on the same subject. I just sort of wanted to update it. with how things have changed, you know, because for me, it's a type of thing where it's like, I'm constantly monitoring that. So sometimes, I mean, you know, you're never doing the same game

on Kickstarter over and over again, so there's always some variables that are changing, but also trends are changing just across the internet and the industry as a whole too. So I'm always just trying to monitor what's working for me and what's not. But I mean, as far as drilling down stuff in the most recent post and sort of, I think, traditionally across all the post-mortems I've done with online advertising. I've traditionally focused on Facebook, BorgameGeek, and Reddit. Those are the three, I would say, are the most consistently shown that I have metrics on from campaign to campaign.

I will try, I will always try to incorporate at least one or two new sites every time I do a Kickstarter. But I'm never going to bite off like five new sites, right? I'm never going to be like, here's 2,000 more bucks. I'm going to dump on these four new sites, you know, 500 each or something, because I'm so scared. And I mean, I've got some of that fear that you have. I think that's a legit, I think it's good to have a legitimate fear about spending money on advertising. And, you know, if you don't have a good product and if you're not doing it effectively,

you're basically flushing money down the toilet. So you need to make sure that your product. So some of the stuff we've already talked about in this podcast, like play testing, iterating on a prototype, making sure there's at least some interest in your game, I think, is important. So that adds, you know, so when you get to this point, you're not just throwing money after a product that just isn't up to the quality standard or or a market fit for what's going on. I mean, right. Right. Yeah. There's plenty of horror stories in that department, right?

Yeah, that's a great. That's a great starting point, right? And always, I get these questions, you know, all the time, which is just like, you know, how do I get my game published? How do I become a bestseller when it's like, well, first, you've got to have a great game. Yeah. And if you don't have a great, you know, the advertising is sort of adding fuel to. the fire, but the game is not a fire already. You're done. If you don't have a game that people want, you can spend, you can have an advertising budget

that's $10,000 and it's not going to make any difference. You know, someone with a great game that only isn't advertising of $1,000 is going to get a better return on investment. So that's an important thing to realize. But you also need to have a lot of faith because Kickstarter's system for tracking pledges is not perfect. And, you know, you can do your best to a tribute. You know, there are definitely some pledges and revenue that you're going to be able to 100% attribute to advertising.

But there's going to be plenty of other direct refers or no referral information and other stuff that comes through that you're going to have to just have a faith is either organic, which is great, or probably had something to do with your advertising. So, you know, I mean, that's basically what we drilled down. We're just transparent about how much money we spend on each platform. And for every any of a campaign, we try to, if we're not too busy, we try to take the time to do a post-mortem on, here's how much we spent on Facebook. Here's the clicks we got. Here's the cost per click. And here's how much direct revenue we can, that sort of Kickstarter is telling us we made when their campaign was live. So we can deduce an ROI out of that.

You know, I would say in general, the most recent post I actually took a look at. at looking at things sort of from now since the past. And the bad news is that I would say online advertising is getting more and more competitive. So our return on investment for Facebook advertising back only to Maxo Apocalypse was almost 100% more than it was in 2020. So in the past three years, it's gotten a lot more competitive

on Facebook, which is why you need to look at this stuff because as we all know, there are new apps that have crop up, You know, TikTok's a new social type app. Like that could be the new untapped marketing platform where their users are, you know, the cost per click is so low because they don't have the advertising dollars that Facebook has. And advertising is constantly changing and people are moving where they're focusing. So you need to be, you need to be willing to be mobile, I think. But, you know, in general, I would say our return on investment has decreased.

still, you know, the online marketing has definitely become more competitive. But Facebook is still a positive ROI. So, I mean, I would always recommend that. Board Game Geek, we've always had a positive ROI, but I know a lot of people don't. I think the big thing with board game geek is you need to sort of know whether or not you're a good fit for that market. I mean, it's board game geek. So every board game is on that site. So people think it's all board gamers are on that site.

But I would say there's a particular type of gamer that is. more inclined to be a regular board game geek user than, you know, the average gamer probably even. So yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to say that that, that, that identification of the target audience that you actually want to reach out to, right?

Who is your ideal player for a game? This is one of the most important questions to answer, even at the very beginning of your process, right? When you're making a game, how do you know if you're succeeding? Well, if the person who is supposed to be your ideal target audience is loving it. And then once you know who your ideal target audience is, that makes the advertising part a lot easier too. Like, as you mentioned, it's a little bit scary because returns are dropping everywhere, you know, it's getting more competitive out there and people are moving around from place to place.

You need to figure out where your ideal target audience is going already, right? What sites are they visiting? What channels are they spending time on? And if there's the kind of, you know, if you're a, you know, a crunchy Euro game and your fans are probably spending a lot of time on board game geek. But if you're, you know, a family like, you know, a card game, much less so. And so figuring out where you advertise, it feels like you really need to be smart about the places

where your fans, your players are already going to be. And what's crazy about that is like places like Facebook and Reddit, you can like, you get, you know, those are big enough marketplaces that every type of gamer is on them. But on Reddit, what subreditor are they in, you know? Are you making a fantasy game? Like maybe you should advertise in the Dungeons and Dragon channel, you know? Are you making a dungeon crawler type game?

Like you can do something like that. If you're on Facebook, you can get like super granular with like demographics. Are you targeting men? Are you targeting people that are 30 and older? You know, are you Dark Tower, the return of Dark Tower? Are you targeting people who are older than X because they remember the original, you know? There's all sorts of groups that you can set up on some of these social networking sites to target stuff. So that's all stuff you have to think about.

And it definitely can feel overwhelming. Yeah. So let's let's bring it down because I know. know I my anxiety goes up when I start talking about this stuff. I got to imagine for people out there that they're they're getting a little stressed by this conversation. Let's let's let's let's break it down to some very you know small actionable things. How should people you know today be thinking about the sort of thing? Let's say either you know I'm I'm I have a game I'm working on but I'm not ready to kind of advertise it yet or I've got a game that right now I'm going to be launching on

Kickstarter and I want to be pushing you know I want to I want to spend let's say I got a thousand dollars that I can spend on advertising. Let's look at those two cases and say maybe give like a couple concrete steps that you would advise, say, what three things, no more than three things that you'd do. Right. So if I was still not quite, if I wasn't even thinking about Kickstarter yet or I was just finishing up a prototype and sort of being like, okay, maybe I'll kickstart this. I'm sort of at that still early phase.

I don't think I'm spending any money on advertising. But what I would be starting to think about is, you know, getting a website. up, starting a blog or a development diary on board game geek, or posting about it, joining some Facebook groups about board games or Reddit groups, subreddits about board game design, and maybe posting some of the things I'm coming across as talking about my experience through that process and that development cycle. So those would be my recommendations for someone who's sort of still like, you know, still not quite at that I'm going to self-public. this thing or I'm taking this to Kickstarter.

Because the other thing too is maybe you're at that stage and maybe you want to start putting together a sell sheet and talking to publishers. Maybe you don't want to do this yourself. If this advertising talk is too stressful, maybe you want to find a publisher to publish your game, you know? So I think if you're still in that step, those are all the things you should be considering and you should be asking yourself, can I take on all this and do I want to, you know, if you only have one game in you or if you only have a couple game ideas, if you don't have like a

book of game ideas or if you're not thinking about game ideas like every day and you're not thinking about like long tail stuff. There's really no reason to kickstart yourself. You know, it's such, it's it's so much easier just to, you mean, even if you have three or four game ideas. I mean, you have to really have a passion for wanting to control your, to not only have a game idea, but want to have full control over it to, I think to self-publish and take go the Kickstarter route. So if you're that type of person, like sort of I am, where some of the most anxious parts for me of the Kickstarter process is when you send all the files to China and pay them the money for the deposit. And it's like you're not doing anything. You're just hoping that everything comes back to you.

Or you're waiting for games on boats. Those are the most stressful times for me because I've got no control over the timetable. And I have no control over anything of the project. And that's like the first time I really let go of it. So I, yeah, I share that both those anxieties and the end recommendation. You know, when I first like put, you know, put all my life savings down on to get ascension printed and hoping that it goes up and hoping that everybody buys it. It's like, you send this wire to try and you're like, they're going to shit in something, right?

You know, like that first time you do that is super stressful. So I think that's a really important part before. or someone even thinks about Kickstarter to sort of assess internally, you know, whether you really want to self-publish and become a publisher or if you're really just passionate about the design process. Because being a publisher is about more than being a publisher, at least in my case, where, you know, we're smaller. I'm not only a publisher.

I'm also a manager of some of the friends I've made along the way whose games I've published. I'm a business person where I need to look at all this ROI and some of the stuff we're talking about, which isn't exactly my favorite thing, but it's sort of like what I've always been good at at school and I sort of acknowledge I'm good at some of these things, you know, being organized and all this kind of stuff. It's, you know, the creative part is, like the creative thing is still an outlet to me. You know, when I started, the creative design process was a creative outlet for my real job.

And now my real job in publishing is still a real job. And the creative process is just a piece of that job that is still an outlet. So where are you, where are you fall on that spectrum, I think? is important to know before you consider spending any of my own advertising. Yeah. I always recommend if you can when you're for your first design especially, try to work with a publisher, try to sell it to a publisher, get them. They know what they're doing.

They have a lot of experience. They have a team of people to kind of do these other jobs. And that lets you focus on the part that you most of the time, if you're designing games, you love the most, which is actually designing games. And it has the added benefit of the very least for your first time going through it. You can watch along the process, see what they do right? and also get a game out there with your name on it, start building a little bit of an audience before you start taking the risk of doing it on your own.

So I agree with that. And your advice also of, you know, getting, you know, posting in public forums and posting a design journal and all those things to start building, again, building a community, getting your name out there, adding value, all that stuff's great. So, all right, now let's move to the other case. All right, I'm committed. I've got a game. This is the bees knees. People love it. Playtests are going great.

I'm going to go to Kickstarter. I don't have that much money. I don't have that much of an audience, but I want to do it and I want to spend some money to advertise what are like, you know, one to three concrete things I should be doing. Well, the first thing I would say is the reason you probably don't have a lot of money is because getting a game to the point you already got it to probably cost you at least $10,000 bucks. So having a game and taking, like having a game and spending the money on art and having enough art that looks good enough on Kickstarter, like with the way things are going and how competitive is. I think there's like sort of a baseline expectation of you need thousands of dollars to be able to expend to it. And that's not just on art, but it's like between everything you're going to need to do,

you're going to need, you know, probably close to $10,000 if they're considering it. And hopefully you've got a thousand left to spend on advertising. And I would say if it's your first time and you're thinking about advertising, I would always focus on advertising that you can sort of turn the dial up on and turn the dial back on. So those are things like Facebook, and Google. What's great about those platforms is you can set up budgets and you can spend $5 a day, $1 a day, $30 a day.

And if your Kickstarter is live and you can start collecting this data, you can start seeing what's working in that work. And if you're really that tight of, you know, if you're really that tight of cash and you're, you probably have more time to focus on this kind of stuff. And you can watch it literally every day and you can see, you can track your ROA on day day and if after a couple days you know i mean i wouldn't say do it i wouldn't say immediately i mean you've got to give it a little bit of time to work but if after a week if you're spending you know 10 bucks a day on facebook and you're not seeing any backs on facebook or referrals you know maybe it's maybe you need to

reconsider and either modify your audience on facebook because it is very granular and you can target different things try something new try a new ad um but you can be constantly adjusting things day to day um to make sure you're maximizing that budget The problem with sites like board game geek and some of the other content sites that are out there that support board games, there's nothing wrong with those sites. Those sites are great. They support the industry. But a lot of them, because they're manual processes and their setup, their service by ad salespeople or they're set up manually, where you're sending me your ad and I'm actually going into the code of my website and taking the time, my time to set it up, is that you can't make these variable changes at all the time.

So typically they're going to ask for contracts where it's like, oh, you want ad, advertising on boarding geek, you need to buy X number of impressions at X. You know, we're not going to talk to you if you want to spend. We're not equipped. It's not even that they won't talk to. It's that they're not equipped to accept $100 for a week and then come back to you a week later and try to ask for more. So you want to focus on the sites they can because, you know, if you're using Google AdWords or something, you can see these ads, these keywords are bringing in backs, you know. Maybe if you're Ascension, you're talking about deck building or, you're using, you're, you're, you're, using fantasy languages and dungeons and warriors and fighters and like knights and those types of

keywords are bringing you in things and you can see that and not only can you see that but you can see that like demon brings in more backs than night you know so if you stop spending money on night and you start spending more money on demon but the great thing about it is you're spending money in real time you're not you haven't committed your entire budget without seeing any results so for anyone's starting out, I would suggest sticking to, you know, those, those platforms that support that type of methodology. How much, you mentioned, you know, sort of being able to watch these things and, and have to spend time on it.

How much time do you think somebody should commit in this window? You know, so what I've heard you say is like, all right, if you're not, you know, you're just getting started and you've got a limited budget and you're not sure, Google, Reddit, Facebook, places where you can scale and spend as, you know, a couple dollars a day all the way up to as much as you want are great sources. And I heard you say that you want to, you know, you need to test. You're both the creative, right, what the ad says and what images you use, as well as who you're targeting, right?

Are we targeting people that are, you know, whatever certain age demographics or that follow these other games or that like these things. You can get very granular with the stuff. And you want to experiment with that stuff. But for each test, it's going to take a couple of days to get results. So you need to at least wait four to seven days. Right. But then you need to be paying attention and watching it.

and then tweaking things. What kind of time commitment should people be expecting to spend on that process? Well, I would say that the upfront sort of setting it all up at first probably is a bigger chunk of time, you know, depending on how familiar you are with each platform and, you know, just learning where things are to click and set things up, you know, could be 48 hours of the first day. You know, if I'm setting up Facebook for the first time, it may take me four hours to set up, set up three or four ads.

In general, I would suggest that people start with a lot of creative, so a lot of different ads, a lot of different groups to target, a lot of different keywords if it's, you know, or demographics, if it's Facebook keywords, if it's super Google AdWords, a lot of different subreddits, if it's Reddit, sort of cast the wide net at the start. And then I think once you're up and running, so once you've done that setup, I think you're talking about like an hour a day, like logging in and checking the results, looking at the metrics, turning ads on and off, should be relatively quick once you've set things up. Because, I mean, this is just our strategy.

It's not like, I don't think this is like a silver bullet, but in general, we sort of cast a wide debt. And then as the campaign goes on, we start fine tuning. And then by the time, like, our 48-hour mark happens, we know the best performing creative. Like, we know which picture, like, with the text exactly the same. Like, we know the best phrase or text, sentence that we have with our ad. And we know the best, like, picture with our ad.

ad, you know, by the last 48 hours. You know, we certainly have zeroed in at that point and know what our best, what those best things are. And that's what we're going to be pushing on Facebook. You know, and on Facebook, we know that. We not only knew the best ad and the best copy to go with it, we also know the groups where we've seen the best results, you know, and we've probably pushed up the ad spend in those groups. You know, we probably ratcheted down the ones that aren't doing as well. Maybe they're at $0 a day. Maybe they're at $1 or $2 a day. And the group that's performing really well, maybe at $50, $100 a day. But I mean, that's the kind of thing you want to do as we're tweaking.

And the more and more you do it, the more campaigns you do, the better you're going to get out of it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the sort of underlying thing here. I think it's great to have those concrete advice. But, you know, when you zoom back on a philosophical level, it's not that different than designing a game, right? You try, you have a sort of, you know, inspiration of who you think might be the target you're going to hit. You have the, of what might appeal to them in art and text and creative.

and then you test it and you see what works and what doesn't. And then you refine over time and you go through that iteration process until you can get to the place you want to be. For me, thinking about it that way, helps to remove a little bit of the mystery and anxiety around the ad world. Yeah, but I mean, there's nothing, I mean, if you want less work, you know, so in this example, if you only have $1,000 of money, you know, while we're talking on Facebook and these advertising sets to let you scale that money

and maybe be more effective with it, there's no question that's going to be a bigger time commitment doing advertising on those platforms, especially when you start out. Whereas you could take that same thousand dollars and spend all of it on board game geek and it would literally be, you know, here's my ad, or here's a couple ads that they're just going to rotate and do. Here's my money. They'll send you an invoice. Here's my money. You're done.

So, you know, if that's the advantage of some of those sites too, and maybe that's why. But that's also why you can really be flushing money down the toilet because if you commit to that invoice and you spend it, you know, there's not much you can do to change it. Board Game Geek will let you change the ad throughout the course of your campaign, but you're not going to see metrics. You're just going to have to sort of ask them what's getting more clicks or send them more creatives for them to put up in their rotation. you're not going to get the type of granular metrics and data that you get from the other platforms.

Yeah. No, and that's the big thing I try to be focused on is how can you get concrete feedback to know when you're doing well and know when you're just lighting money on fire. Yeah. Makes a difference. But yeah, if you don't have the time to do it or, you know, again, ideally you, if you have more resources, you can obviously, you know, there are people who's full-time job it is to optimize advertising. Oh, 100% for our campaigns. We've brought people in to help with this because I don't have the time to do all. that stuff. But even if you are going to hire somebody or even if you're going to kind of use one of

these one-stop stops to pay to know what's going on and understand it yourself so that you know how you're spending your money. And I would say if you are going to hire somebody to do your advertising, which is perfectly legitimate, I am lucky enough to have, I mean, I hire somebody, but I happen to know him personally, like in real life and knew them before I used them for advertising. What I would say from the people I've used and what I've seen is I would find somebody who's charging you a percentage of your ad spend. Again, you're going to control it, but just like I said, sort of it's like an hour a day of work or whatever,

it's logging in, it's checking it. You know, you may have to commit a certain minimum, but you want to, you know, if they're doing a great job and you're getting a great return, you should absolutely be spending more money on advertising spend. And if you're paying them a percentage of your advertising spend, that's going to motivate them to have you, you know, to do a good job and have your ads perform well.

Don't hire somebody that you're just going to pay a flat fee because they've got no incentive to do a good job. Sure. So I would say when it comes to advertising, you know, make sure. I mean, what I've seen with the bigger firms, you know, I mean, and the friend I use happened, he used to work. Like this used to be his full-time job in a firm. And, you know, it was like a newspaper type, you know, they were a newspaper originally and they advanced into like online sales and Facebook ads and stuff for companies that use the newspaper. And he, you know, he's been, he's very adamant about that.

He's told me, you know, there's a bunch of people on Fiverr and like other gig type websites that are discharged you something. But they're like, you know, that's not how it's done in the industry and that's not the type of person you want to get because, you know, whether, you know, they're just going to get, they're going to get their amount of money no out of what and they don't really care how your ads are going. Sure. So they're really just going to set it up for you and run it. They're not going to be tweaking it as you go. Good advice. Good advice. Well, I, you know, I want to thank you for taking the time. You know, we've both had a private conversation where you kind of helped advise me on my Kickstarter and things we're doing. And then now we're providing this advice for everybody that's out there really wants to, you know, both in the process of getting started and publishing and advertising.

And I really appreciate you putting that information out there. I know I've already mentioned the articles that you have on rock manor games.com. Is that the best place for people to find out about you and follow your stuff? Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I think, I mean, on our homepage, we do our best to, I mean, you'll see our most recent blog posts. But if you click any blog post, we've, thanks to you, Justin, and other people have sort of complimented us on some of the content that we're most appreciated for. We actually have a top and best post thing on our blog. So if you click our blog, you're going to be able to find some of the stuff we've been talking about.

I mean, you know, whether it's our best posts that we've sort of picked ourselves or our top posts, you know, based on the last month, just metrics or visits. You know, I mean, just looking at my top post, I just clicked through. You've got the tail of three pledge managers, which is a big article I did on which pledge manager you should use and why in our experience with all three of them we've used. And then our second post is our maximum apocalypse RPG is coming out. And our third one is advertising your Kickstarter on kick track. Is it worth it?

So, you know, you'll find that content, the content that's sort of the hottest on our pretty easily on our website. Great. If you're interested in our games, we've got a big button on the front page that says subscribe to our newsletter. That's definitely the best way to hear about our new stuff. Great.

Well, thanks again for everything you're doing. It's been great getting to chat with you. And hopefully we'll get to do this again soon. You know, see how things evolve next year. Yeah. Hopefully we'll see each other at a convention sometime soon. That would be wonderful being face to face again. That's really, that's really the hope, I think.

Yes. All right. Well, then next time in person. Well, thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on.

Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find books or something.